Implementation Or Entertainment

A successful shop owner and all around great guy once told me an expression he had learned from a very wise person. “Training without action is pure entertainment.” I would take it that the reverse is true. “Training with implementation equals success.”

My business card says that I am an implementation coach. I work with clients to help them implement the training they receive in how to better manage their automotive repair and maintenance shops. You may remember some of my past articles on shop profitability and how to retire well financially from this industry. These are the results of implementation. Putting into place the systems, procedures and measurement processes that lead to a profitable, stress-free business.

The greatest challenge I face in my work is the gap between a client learning something new and actually taking action on that new knowledge. There seems to be a myriad of reasons for this phenomenon. Based on my experience there are about 10 per cent of shop owners that take the information and run with it and put it into place in their businesses reaping the rewards relatively quickly. There are another 25 per cent that will take the information and run with it and encounter roadblocks of one kind or another, but with a bit of coaching they will generally accomplish what is required of them in short order. Then there are the majority of us who fall into the next category, about 55 per cent. We all have our various reasons for not being able to move forward on implementing new things into our businesses and these will be what this article will discuss. The last 10 per cent are either completely unwilling to change, or are so deluded as to their success, that the information is completely rejected.

My focus will be primarily on the middle 80 per cent. I hope that all of you will find something helpful in this discussion.

I have found the following themes common in the lack of implementation by shop owners:1) Incomplete understanding, 2) Lack of ability, 3) Lack desire, 4) Lack of interest, 5) Frustration, 6) Fear, 7) Personal Beliefs. Let’s address them one at a time. The order in which we address these topics reflects the general order I experience them as a coach with my clients. This reminds me of another expression, “knowledge requires responsibility,” which leads me to believe that many of us are not always prepared to deal with the new information.

It is important to explain that most shop owners go back to their shops after receiving management training, excited to try out the new information. They start or try to start to implement what they have learned. It is after the first attempt or various attempts that they come up against roadblocks that stall the implementation process. The most common roadblock is incomplete understanding of the training. This happens for various reasons: it could be that the trainer skipped a step or gave incomplete information; or the shop owner could have missed a particular point for one reason or another. At this point it is important to review the material or to check with the trainer; or another classmate as to whether your understanding of the concept is clear and complete. At times training needs to be repeated. A common example is the misunderstanding of the difference between mark ups and margins when deciding what to charge for a particular item. The difference is thousands of dollars on the bottom line.

Lack of ability comes into play next. It is possible the shop owner may not be able to proceed with making a particular change because they may need training in a related skill that is required prior to implementing the current skill. An example of this would be trying to implement a system of charging for diagnosis but not having a well-trained diagnostic technician or all of the required diagnostic tools. You will not be able to offer value to your customers and you will feel a lack of confidence in your shop’s diagnostic abilities. This will limit your ability to charge properly for diagnosis.

Lack of desire is a complex challenge. For some shop owners things are “good enough.” They have decent cash flow and a lifestyle they did not have when they worked for someone else. For some, they have been fighting to stay in business for so long, they have no energy left to re-engage and make changes; in both cases they have accepted the status quo. They lack the sense of urgency required to make improvements. The main way to break through this and to create desire is the conversation about retirement and what the future holds for us.

You may think to yourself how someone could have a lack of interest and still be owners of a business. It is more common than you might think and it usually leads to failure if the owner does not wake up to the fact. The business dies a slow death. Lack of interest comes out in two comments from owners. “It is too much work” or “I am too busy putting out fires.” Both of these comments are related. On the one hand, they survive day to day and don’t want to work harder to improve. On the other hand, they do not want to do the work to establish systems and procedures that would prevent many of the fires from happening.

Frustration is caused by roadblocks, which in turn have many causes. Some common causes are not enough staff, high staff turn over or not enough time in the day. These are possibly caused by lack of profitability to pay for enough staff, poor management or leadership skills, and poor delegation skills. In many cases, owners are afraid to release control over some aspects of their businesses and end up micromanaging their staff. It is possible the owner is going to need training in human resources before they can move forward with certain implementations.

One of the hardest things for a shop owner is to admit and face their fears. When learning new management processes many such fears come to the surface. It is as basic as the fear of change, which is really the fear of the unknown. Another common fear is that we will loose customers if we implement something that we perceive the customer is not willing to pay for. It may be as simple as the fear of rejection, it is not just about the money; we are hurt when someone declines our services. We fear that our reputation will be damaged or that we will be viewed as immoral or unethical.

This becomes especially tough when we have built the business enough to have full-time staff on the service counter. After a while, the thought of going back and dealing with customers, day-in-and-day-out, terrifies us. On top of this let’s add the fear of competition. They are doing it cheaper than us, so they are going to steal all of our customers. We need to realize that most of our fears are unfounded; it is when we have a clear understanding of the expectations of our customers that we can eliminate most of our fears.

Let me choose just one area that I run into regularly as an example. We teach that a shop should make a 45 to 50 per cent gross profit on parts, and we recommend using a parts matrix to achieve that. It means that we make a higher gross profit on low cost items and less gross profit on high cost items. It does mean that we will be charging higher prices for some items than we did in the past. Our research and experience shows that 86 per cent of customers are more concerned that the total price for a job be established up front and that we stick to it, rather than in the price of any one particular item.

Yet many shop owners tell me that their customers trust them and they don’t need estimates. “Just go ahead,” the customer says. So the job gets done, the invoice is generated and the final bill comes to $329.56. How many of you are not sure what the customer is going to think and trim it back to $299.99.

That is fear. You truly do not believe your customer trusts you, because in the past you have discovered their limit and then it got ugly. How much easier is it to have the discipline of always keeping your customer in control of their money? They know how much the estimate
is going to be ahead of time, and it matches the invoice at the end of the day. You can then build a profitable estimate and earn the deserved profit at the end of the day.

Deserved profit at the end of the day. What kind of statement is that? How many of us have a deep personal belief that profit is a dirty word, or that it is a sin, or that we are making money off of someone else’s back? Please give this one some deep thought. For now let me say, if you offer quality service and products with a great warranty, that save the driving public time and money, you deserve to make a profit. That is how your money is made; no one is writing you a pay cheque.

Implementation is hard work, but it can be very rewarding, fun, and profitable. Analyze why you have stalled in making a particular change in your business, break it down to which of the seven items above that is stopping you and then break it down into even smaller bite-size pieces that you can accomplish. Find other shop owners who are working on the same problems and form performance groups, or find a mentor to help walk you through the steps. We are so quick to judge ourselves as failures that we fail to realize that we are normal. SSGM